‘Black Panther’ and the Revenge of the Black Nerds

By Lawrence Ware

Feb. 16, 2018

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CreditCreditRichie Pope

“Black Panther” lived up to the hype. After a yearlong marketing campaign, the superhero film is rightly enjoying enormous success. It broke Fandango’s presale ticket record for superhero films. Movie critics are euphoric. Now one thing is clear: It’s cool to be a black nerd.

I wish this had been true when I was in high school in the late 1990s in Oklahoma. I played football because I’m six feet tall and that’s what I thought I was supposed to do. But I would often skip practice to hide in the locker room and read comic books featuring black characters like the X-Men’s Lucas Bishop. I wanted to escape into a world of fantasy populated by characters who looked like me. Full of youthful angst, I spent many sleepless nights wondering whether there was something wrong with me; none of my friends had similar interests. I didn’t know a single black person who read comic books.

Now I know that to be a black nerd is by no means anomalous; millions of people who look like me grew up loving comic books. Yet despite our numbers, we were underground for a long time. Today, though, there appears to be a widening cultural appreciation for what black people have always known: There are many ways to be black in America. The 44th president helped.

Barack Obama meant a lot to black nerds. Jordan Peele, the director of “Get Out,” told NPR back in 2012, “Up until Obama, it was basically Urkel and the black guy from ‘Revenge of the Nerds.’” Mr. Obama showed us that to be black and nerdy could actually be an expression of black cool, what the author Rebecca Walker, who compiled a series of essays on that topic, defines as audacity, resistance and authenticity in the face of white supremacy.

“What’s remarkable is the way ‘nerd’ is such a badge of honor now,” Mr. Obama told Popular Science in 2016. “Growing up, I’m sure, I wasn’t the only kid who read Spider-Man comics and learned how to do the Vulcan salute, but it wasn’t like it is today.” He added, “I think America’s a nerdier country than it was when I was a kid — and that’s a good thing!”

His eight years in office showed us a black person could simultaneously love basketball and “Star Trek,” hip-hop and comic books. He was a nerd, yes, but he was no Urkel. Mr. Obama was important. He expanded the possibilities for what black folks could be in America. “Black Panther” is confirmation that we are cool now.

Before, popular films reduced blackness to a set of archetypes and stereotypes. Movies like “Gone With the Wind” portrayed black people as unlearned and uncultured. When we were lucky enough to see black nerds in films like “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” they were usually so socially inept they were unbearable to watch.

That’s why “Black Panther” is so refreshing. Chadwick Boseman plays the title character, who is also known as T’Challa, the king of the fictional African country of Wakanda; he’s smooth and brilliant. His sister, Shuri, a breakout role for Letitia Wright, is easily the smartest person in the Marvel cinematic universe, and as the princess of Wakanda, she deploys her genius to create the technology used by the people of her country to defend themselves. Even Killmonger, Black Panther’s nemesis, played by Michael B. Jordan, is a warrior with exceptional intellectual gifts.

This is a movie made by black nerds for black nerds — I just cannot believe Disney gave the director, Ryan Coogler, $200 million to pull it off. It’s a wonderful time for a black nerd to be alive.

You can be a hip-hop head, a sneaker fiend, a theater expert, a modern dance aficionado or an unapologetic comic book nerd. The democratizing power of social media has elevated the voices of those who were previously marginalized, helping undermine white culture’s habit of limiting black people to a handful of stereotypes.

The reality, of course, is that there has never been only one way to be black. There were always intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois, journalists like Ida B. Wells, playwrights like Lorraine Hansberry, artists like Alma Thomas. Today we have black comic book scholars like Deborah Elizabeth Whaley, literary geniuses like Kiese Laymon, Afrofuturist poets like Eve Ewing and the singular, brilliant Chance the Rapper, who brings his nerdy, gospel-influenced sensibilities to bear on postmodern hip-hop.

I must admit that I am suspicious of corporations like Disney using a beloved franchise like Black Panther or Ava DuVernay’s film of “A Wrinkle in Time” to commercialize black nerd-dom and, ultimately, to profit off the 21st-century Black Renaissance we are experiencing.

But I also cannot help feeling overjoyed about the cultural moment we are in. I wish I could go back and tell that awkward, fearful kid hiding in the locker room that in another decade he would see a big-budget comic book film directed by a black man featuring a virtually all-black cast.

I saw “Black Panther” in a packed IMAX theater in Oklahoma when it opened on Friday. Tears welled up in my eyes as I thought about that kid hiding in the looker room, afraid to let others know he read and loved comic books. But, to paraphrase the Geto Boys: Damn, it feels good to be a black nerd.

Lawrence Ware (@Law_writes) is a co-director of the Center for Africana Studies at Oklahoma State University.